a seedpod in outer space. Through Sept. 10. (Wer-
ner, 4 E. 77th St. 212-988-1623.)
GALLERIES-CHELSEA
JAY CRITCHLEY AND CHAD PERSON
Two predictably dystopian takes on conspicuous
consumption. Critchley wrapped an MG sports car
in plastic bags and fastened several Stop & Shop
bags to the ceiling, so they hover above it in a
threatening nimbus. It's an impressive feat, but the
message of excess is obvious, to say the least. In an
edgier early video from 1988, the artist poses as
president of the Nuclear Recycling Consultants and
proselytizes about the values of nuclear energy. At
one point he dons a clear plastic cape and performs
a ridiculous ritual in front of an abandoned power
plant. Person's work challenges capitalist optimism
with paintings of epigrams-rendered in delicately
curling script-that convey an air of resignation
through sayings such as "know when to fold em."
Through Sept. 10. (Freight & Volume, 530 W 24th
St. 212-691-7700.)
ELIJAH GOWIN
After two previous series of photographs based on
appropriated and manipulated material, Gowin
picks up his camera and points it at the sun. As
usual, his results are low-tech and grainy, as if blown
up from antique negatives; they're visionary, ab-
stracted, and a little mad. Whether obscured by
clouds, seen through branches, or giving off an aura
of glittering flares, Gowin's sun has a lambent glow.
And even at its brightest, it rarely feels hot, because
the colors are so muted: pale greens, blush pinks,
storm-cloud slates. Subtlety is rarely this compel-
ling. Opens Sept. 8. (Mann, 210 Eleventh Ave., at
24th St. 212-989-7600.)
PIETER HUGO
For his sensational new series of large-scale color
portraits and landscapes, the South African pho-
tographer travelled to Accra, Ghana, the site of a
sprawling dump for technological waste from
around the world. Obsolete computers, cell phones,
and game consoles, gutted and burned for their
metal content, are scattered across a blackened
wasteland so toxic you can practically smell the
fumes. Hugo surveys the hellish scene with remark-
able restraint and pained concern for the men,
women, and (mostly) children eking out a living
there. Facing his camera, stoic and solemn, they're
as iconic as Lewis Hine's child laborers but far
more doomed. Opens Sept. 8. (Milo, 525 W 25th
St. 212-414-0370.)
IIWHAT MATTERS NOW?: PROPOSALS FOR
A NEW FRONT PAGE II
The nonprofit gallery opens its season with a work-
shop designed to engage and provoke its audience
with a broad range of issues critical to the gather-
ing and dissemination of news. For the first ten days
of the show, six savvy "hosts" (Deborah Willis, Me-
lissa Harris, Joel Meyerowitz, Wafaa Bilal, Stephen
Mayes, and the project's prime move.t; Fred Ritchin)
will invite visitors to take part in an editorial pro-
cess that will have few givens and countless vari-
ables. The product of these exchanges-photographs,
texts, videos, screen grabs-will accumulate on the
walls, beginning Sept. 7 with an exhibition formally
opening on Sept. 19. (Aperture, 547W 27th St. 212-
505-5555.)
Short List
NICK CAVE: Shainman, 513 W. 20th St. 212-
645-1701; Boone, 541 W 24th St. 212-752-2929.
Opens Sept. 8. BRUCE CONNOR: Cooper, 521
W. 21st St. 212-255-1105. Through Sept. 24.
PETER FUNCH: VI Gallery, 558 W. 21st St. 917-
526-7201. Opens Sept. 7. JANE HAMMOND: Ga-
lerie Lelong, 528 W 26th St. 212-315-0470. Opens
Sept. 8. DJANGO HERNANDEZ: Alexander and
Bonin, 132 Tenth Ave., at 18th St. 212-367-7474.
Through Oct. 12. VIK MUNIZ: Sikkema Jenkins,
530 W. 22nd St. 212-929-2262. Opens Sept. 9.
DEMETRIUS OLIVER / TAMAR HALPERN: D'Amelio
Terras, 525 W. 22nd St. 212-352-9460. Opens
Sept. 8. STERLING RUBY / LUCIO FONTANA: Ro-
12 THE NEW YORKER, SEPTEMBER 12, 2011
sen, 525 W 24th St. 212-627-6000. Opens Sept.
10. HAIM STEINBACH: Bonakdar, 521 W. 21st
St. 212-414-4144. Opens Sept. 8. NICOLA TYSON:
Petzel, 537 W. 22nd St. 212-680-9467. Opens
Sept. 8. MARTHA WILSON: P.P.O.W, 535 W. 22nd
St. 212-647-1044. Opens Sept. 9.
DANCE
NEW YORK CITY BALLET
The company's monthlong fall season opens with
the first of six performances of Peter Martins's
fast-paced, no-nonsense "Swan Lake," from 1996.
But the big event comes on Sept. 22, with the un-
veiling of a new full-company work, "Ocean's
Kingdom," with choreography by Martins and
music by Sir Paul McCartney. Predictably, the for-
mer Beatle's first ballet is a love story, though
whether there will be a pas de deux in the octo-
pus's garden has yet to be determined. (David H.
Koch, Lincoln Center. 212-870-5570. Sept. 13 at
7:30. Through Oct. 9.)
NEW CHAMBER BALLET
Miro Magloire returns to the City Center Studios
with his pocket-size ensemble, which includes ex-
cellent, versatile musicians. Magloire's dances tend
to feel like meticulous deconstructions of difficult-
to-parse twentieth-century music. The technique is
balletic, and the dancers are quietly luminous, pen-
sive, and musically responsive. As usual, there will
be a new work by Magloire (with music by Berio),
as well as his "Love Song Solos," set to his own
eccentric transcriptions of German lieder scored
for two maracas. As a closer, he has chosen the
more expansive "Chamber Dances," a dynamic
trio by the choreographer Emery LeCrone. (130
W 56th St. 212-868-4444. Sept. 9-10 at 8.)
IIIN PERFORMANCE II
Of all the dance memorials for September 11 th,
the one put together by the Joyce Theatre Foun-
dation boasts the biggest names. The extraordinary
Matthew Rushing, a veteran of Alvin Ailey Amer-
ican Dance Theatre, squeezes what he can out of
Ailey's boilerplate dance "A Song for You." His dis-
tinguished co-workers Clifton Brown and Jamar
Roberts help première a work by Jessica Lang. The
Limón Dance Company revives the spiritually search-
ing "Missa Brevis," from 1958. And Paul Taylor,
true to his contrary nature, presents not "Pro-
methean Fire," which is widely considered his 9/11
dance, but the radiant "Branden burgs." (Rocke-
feller Park, River Terrace at Warren St. 212-691-
9740. Sept. 10-11 at 5.)
119/11 DANCE: A ROVING MEMORIAL II
Soon after the September 11 th attacks, Sarah Skaggs
created a minimalist meditative response in a solo
called "Dances for Airports." For the tenth anni-
versary of the disaster, she has converted the solo
into a group work, so that it may emerge out of
pedestrian traffic in public spaces. Performers will
coalesce on Sunday in Washington, D.C., and
Shanksville, Pennsylvania. In New York, the dance
happens in Union Square at noon, an hour later
near the Washington Square arch, and two hours
after that in Battery Park. (For more information,
visit sarahskaggsdance.org. Sept. 11 at noon, 1,
and 3.)
liTHE TABLE OF SILENCE PROJECT II
Jacqulyn Buglisi's commemoration of 9/11 gathers
a hundred dancers from her company and various
New York dance schools. Silently filing into Lin-
coln Center, they form concentric circles around
Revson Fountain. At the time when the first plane
hit the first tower, they turn their wrists to the sky
and raise their arms in a hopeful gesture of peace.
(For more information, visit buglisi-foreman.org.
Sept. 11 at 8:20 A.M.)
OUT OF TOWN
MERCE CUNNINGHAM DANCE COMPANY
The next stop on the Cunningham "Legacy Tour"
is Bard College. The company, which will officially
disband on New Year's Eve, performs a trio of
works at the college's stunning Gehry-designed
theatre. The highlight is "Suite for Five" (1956-
1958); in this seminal work, the spatial relation-
ships were determined by chance operations, but
the result is a triumph of rigor and transparency.
In contrast, "Sounddance," from 1975, is an erup-
tion of movement and energy, and "Antic Meet"
(1958) offers a rare glimpse of the choreographer's
sillier side. (Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. 845-758-
7900. Sept. 9-10 at 8 and Sept. 11 at 2.)
CLASSICAL MUSIC
CONCERTS IN TOWN
NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC
The Philharmonic, of course, doesn't need a special
reason to celebrate the musical "West Side Story,"
written by its late music director Leonard Bernstein,
but the film version (starring Natalie Wood and
Richard Beymer) is now fifty years old, which pro-
vides a welcome excuse. David Newman conducts
the orchestra, which will provide real-time accom-
paniment to two screenings of the movie. (Avery
Fisher Hall. Sept. 7-8 at 7:30.) + Alan Gilbert, the
Philharmonic's music director, commemorates the
tenth anniversary of 9/11 in a way that only he and
his musicians can-performing the Symphony
No.2, "Resurrection," by one of his legendary pre-
decessors, Gustav MaWer. Two superlative singers,
Dorothea Röschmann and Michelle De Young (as-
sisted by the New York Choral Artists), join the or-
chestra in a performance that will be telecast around
the world the next day. (Avery Fisher Hall. Sept. 10
at 7:30.) (212-875-5656.)
BARYSHNIKOV ARTS CENTER:
IIDAS LIED VON DER ERDE II
George Manahan may no longer be music direc-
tor of City Opera, but he remains a force around
town. He leads the St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble
in a performance of Arnold Schoenberg and Rainer
Riehn's chamber-orchestra version of Mahler's late
masterwork that features the tenor Paul Groves
and the mezzo-soprano Jennifer Johnson Cano.
(450 W 37th St. 866-811-4111. Sept. 8-9 at 8.)
BARGE MUSIC
Sept. 8 at 8: The week's offerings at the barge begin
quietly, with the elegant duo Asteria (the soprano
Sylvia Rhyne and the tenor and lutenist Eric Red-
linger) performing "Music for a Rash Prince," a
set featuring pieces from the medieval Burgundian
court of Charles the Bold. . Sept. 9 at 8: The se-
ries's "There and Then" weekend of early-music
concerts continues with an appearance by Repast,
an ensemble of Baroque violin, viola da gamba,
and harpsichord, playing works mainly by Bach
and Buxtehude. . Sept. 11 at 3: Concerts in mem-
ory of 9/11 have been a fixture at the barge for a
decade. This one (offered free of charge) features
three musicians with a long history at the series-
the violinist Mark Peskanov and the pianists David
Bottoms and Rita Sloan-performing music by
Bach and Beethoven, with special guests. (Fulton
Ferry Landing, Brooklyn. For tickets and full sched-
ule, see bargemusic.org.)
TRINITY CHURCH
Trinity, an important and historic Episcopal institu-
tion in the city, is just steps away from Ground Zero,
and the memorial concerts there will have a special
resonance. Sept. 8 at 8: In a kind of prelude, the su-
perb young Chiara String Quartet plays music of re-
membrance by two prominent uptown composers,
Robert Sirota ("Triptych") and Richard Danielpour. +
Sept. 9 at 8:30: Julian Wachner, the church's direc-
tor of music, will bring together a collection of out-
standing choirs from New York, Washington, Bos-
ton, and Pennsylvania (including the Young People's
Chorus of New York City, the Bach Choir of Beth-
lehem, and the Trinity Choir) along with several spe-
cial guests (the violinist Gil Shaham and the young
Met stars Angela Meade, Anthony Roth Costanzo,
and Luca Pisaroni) for a concert of remembrance
that features Fauré's Requiem, Bernstein's "Chiches-
ter Psalms," and movements from Brahms's "Ger-
man Requiem," among other works. The participat-
ing choirs will also perform concerts earlier in the
day, beginning at 11 A.M. (Broadway at Wall St. No